I was doing a little research for my article.  and came to the following conclusion

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19.2. How much does Lise Gagne earn ?

This is a question many tried to answer before.  If I compare the figures of Dec '06 with Aug '07 we can make a estimation.

In 9 months she had roughly 163.000 downloads, that are more than 18.000 downloads a month (or 600 a day)

My average a download on iStock for this year is $0.69 a download.  Given that Lise has double the payout I have, I estimate that she earns at least $1.40 per download.  But probably more because her files are larger. Nevertheless, we'll stick with the $1.40 per download.

18.000 times $1.40 makes $25.200 a month ... ...

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I though you would be interested to know this

looking to the portfolio...is so easy!!
My good!!

well that's what I thought in the beginning too.

But ...

I've watch lise's portfolio over a certain time and I've seen pictures taking off like hell.  Just ordinary images.

This could be caused by two things :

Lise has customers who are only, mainly buying her images

OR / AND

Lise is favored in the search results.

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This could be caused by two things :
Lise has customers who are only, mainly buying her images
OR / AND
Lise is favored in the search results.

Runaway success like this is nothing new - examples are easily had in every creative medium that you care to name.

Lise's success has absolutely nothing to do with her placement in the search engine, and everything to do with her being in the right place at the right time with the right kind and right amount images. Like Hidesy, she reached a sort of critical mass, and her popularity quickly exploded. As you observed, once this level of popularity is attained, it's possible to maintain it by creating works that are the lesser of those that got you there.

Rebekka Guðleifsdóttir is an example of this sort of thing outside of the commercial photography world - go here to check her out.

I see no inspectors icon, she'd be losing money not taking pictures.

Perrush - there's one other factor you forgot to include...she's also an image inspector which means her income is actually higher than that 

I wonder if she would make more buy spreading her work around to other sites as well; I think she would, what do others think?

That's not the first time I've read someone mention how it's worth it to go exclusive once you are at the Diamond level.  Why Diamond and not before?

I wonder if she would make more buy spreading her work around to other sites as well; I think she would, what do others think?

I think she probably would too, but the amount of work needed to duplicate her portfolio elsewhere would be enormous.  But putting all of your stuff on one site has its risks.  Look at the recent outages on iStock - today alone they've been completely down for hours and hours.  For most of us it's not the end of all, but just imagine how much Lise is losing because of these outages today.  If she had work on varied sites, those sales would chug along like normal while iStock's servers choke and clog.

I have no doubt that tweaks are in place that give her preferred search treatment.  She's the demi-goddess of istock and has brought them tons of business via sales as well as having been interviewed by numerous publications.  It would stand to reason that while they'd never admit it openly, she probably gets "search perks".   Sales at iStock have declined in the last few months due to various system adjustments, and I'd even be willing to bet that Lise has seen a drop as well - though at her level it probably doesn't make a huge impact on her overall income.

Quote from: KiwiRob on September 10, 2007, 06:02

I wonder if she would make more buy spreading her work around to other sites as well; I think she would, what do others think?

Also if you have the portfolio of her size its nice to have the security of iStock (all illegal use will be prosecuted).

Also it is much less work to upload to just one agency.

my 2cents

yeah i agree it would be tons less work to submit to one agency, and for those who earn way more on istock, I can it looking very tempting and perhaps a wise move for them.

I was diaspointed however last year some time to see an old man taken from one photo (he was sitting on a bench on a street) and edited into a strip bar.  It seemed that that use of the image was against their usage rights - but istock didn't seem to do anything about it, despite a very long forum discussion on the subject (on the istock forums - and here)